Hello all you fine folks.
I'm 5 months out from jumping, cold turkey (didn't know), and took Ativan, 1mg, for a period of 8 months. My life started disintegrating about a year ago from these drugs and obviously continues to in withdrawal, albeit with a different flavour. On the benzos, I realised there was a point where all I could do was sit and watch garbage on youtube, no motivation, minimal socialising, deep severe depression, avoiding work, avoiding life, lobotomised, frightened, completely deleted from life.
I have not had an easy life, although I am sure it is easier than for a lot of souls in this world. I've had clinical depression since I was a child, childhood trauma, ran away from home at 16, alcoholic ages 20-31, replaced by an eating disorder for a few years. I'm now 37. I have no (real) career, I am living in a foreign country (with a foreign language, which lends its own difficulties), having migrated twice, and I'm relatively alone here. I own no house, I have extremely minimal savings, I am now a ghost in this country, in my own life, haunting my own body. I have no children (never wanted them) no partner (between the alcoholism and the eating disorder and now the working through of childhood trauma, I would say I was quite immature/ unsocialised, and also didn't have the self-esteem to enter a relationship). Covid closed 2 of my sources of income, hence I started on the Lorazepam when the first wave broke out here in Europe.
I'm sorry for the long background, it has a point for contrast and context, I swear.
Now, I am desperately overwhelmed with life. I don't know how on earth I will get back on track. Any obligation overwhelms and stresses me, even responding to an email or going to the shop below the house, and I collapse. I HAVE to work (though I'm doing it minimally, enough to pay the rent and buy food - I give private lessons. I watch my flatmates put themselves out in the world, do multiple activities per day, study, work, go out for a 2 hour run, then head out and socialise, date. I can barely hold up a 2 minute conversation in the kitchen with them. I see everyone around me engaging in life.
I don't know how, but it seems everyone else has 49 hours in a day, and I seem to have 4. It takes me 3 hours to do something that should take 20 minutes. I sit on my chair all day long with depression, anhedonia, lack of motivation, and intrusive thoughts. This depression is different to my normal depression. Before all of this, yes I wasn't great, but dammit, I had hope, I moved countries, I started fledgling businesses. I could see a future for myself, even if it was harder than for most (always severely lacking in self-confidence), but dammit I tried, I refused to believe I was condemned.
I feel like my life is over and I wasted any potential I may have had.
It was almost better when I was in the first months of withdrawal, because I had 'real' physical symptoms (that people believed) and lived in a braindead, lobotomised fog, and now I have invisible psychological and cognitive damage, but I'm simultaneously more cognizant in healing and therefore more aware of how screwed my situation is.
Now I'm filled with a fear and resentment I never really had before. I used to wear my difficulties with a badge of pride, as in, 'look what I have overcome, and I'm still here!'
Now, they are overwhelming me. I cannot envisage a future for myself. I just yesterday looked back at business emails I sent earlier this year, ones for a covid-closed business that I need to restart, that are full of errors, and I'm humiliated and scared (and seeing career suicide). I feel trapped in a broken brain. I don't know how people work all day, then go and socialise, organise a future life. I don't know how people work - plan a future, put themselves out into the world. I feel destined for poverty and failure. I have intrusive visions of living in the streets, alone. I have no children and I am therefore alone and a failure ( I have NEVER before wanted them, and NEVER felt a failure for not having them). I have no partner and am therefore a reject, a failure, unworthy (I always felt a bit unworthy but I NEVER before saw this as meaning me to be a failure). Same thing with the career. I look at everyone around me, they seem to have money, inheritances, houses, good jobs with security, and I'm a lousy failure ( I NEVER thought this before, I just used to think that I had a different path and I would make it in my own way).
I am deeply resentful of my life, of how alone I am. I resent other buddies for having support, for not having to work through this (I don't actually resent you guys, I am happy that you have the fortune you deserve. How do I put it, it's, not jealousy, not envy, not resentment at YOU, but a resentment at myself, the Universe, why have I been deemed so unworthy to have to live this life alone, without help, without a leg up, having to do everything myself and failing hard at it).
I wish everyone to have a good life and I don't wish them bad personally or resent them, it's just... I am drowning and I don't know why I am destined to struggle, and why some people in this world are so much luckier... it makes me feel so unworthy.
Why was I cursed with my shitty childhood, my years of alcoholism (and lost life, lost career opportunities during that time), Why have I had to fight debilitating depression my whole life, and now benzos and their withdrawal, cutting me off from my potential and opportunities in life to live fully, to excel? It must be because I am deeply unworthy and destined to struggle, while other people instead are given help and security, for example a partner who helps, perhaps parents who care and help them, support them in their life and career and are interested in them, maybe help them buy a house. (related to unreasonable fear- I own no house, have no pension and will die alone in the streets) I know this sounds bitter and unreasonable but I feel alone and frightened and incapable and overwhelmed. And through all this, I am struggling to survive, alone, and the years are ticking by.
I didn't feel this way before. I am frightened of everything.
I know this is not logical. Intellectually I don't feel this way. I know these are immature and ungrateful thoughts, and I know I myself am lucky in comparison to many other people in this world, but I guess it's relative to the environment you are in. However I see people in more difficult situations than me, who are striving, who are succeeding, who are not letting their difficulties get in their way, who started life with nothing and instead I sit on this chair, useless.
These are intrusive thoughts, I fight them every day but I can't help them. I see my life being forever a struggle, I feel trapped, and I feel there is nothing I can do about it. I never resent individuals, I am (genuinely) happy for them. I have never had these extreme thoughts before, I had perspective, but at the moment I can't help it. I am drowning and I can't save myself.
I should put a question to you guys here I guess, but really it's just open. Is anyone else experiencing this. Has anyone seen their spirit return, return to the land of the living, the hopeful?
Thank you for reading my drivel.
